The GB quartet, who only scraped through the round-robin stage because the Italians lost to the Swiss earlier in the day, had promised that they would be an entirely different proposition if they got to the knockout rounds and they were as good as their word. The Swiss had won all nine games they had played coming into this semi-final, but were soundly beaten by Bruce Mouat and his team of Grant Hardie, Hammy McMillan and Bobby Lammie.
Even before Matt Weston had won his solo gold medal last Friday, skeleton was easily the most watchable sport of the Winter Olympics, because the commentary was so soothing. Tangle with snowboarding and you're going to hear a lot of unfamiliar words grabs, spins, flips and rail manoeuvres accompanied by the modifiers spectacular and ooh, and commentators won't tell you what any of it means because they're too excited, even though that is their one job.
The 28-year-old broke the track record at the Cortina Sliding Centre four times in the space of four races, and won in a final combined time of 3min 43.33sec, almost a full second ahead of the runner-up, Germany's Axel Jungk. Weston is the first British man ever to win the Olympic skeleton title. And he did it all despite starting the year with a four-inch tear in his right quad that meant he had to miss pre-season training.
